


Birds of Prey

by khakis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anal Fingering, Bath Sex, Berlin, Dirty Talk, Dubious Morals, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Light BDSM, Light Choking, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rimming, Them against the world, Vaginal Sex, can you be both? i am deciding yes, draco is very bitey, exhibitionism adjacent, hermione and draco are assassin spies, implied minor character death, perhaps a little out of character, techno, with very little context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:46:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28974585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khakis/pseuds/khakis
Summary: Not a soul in the world but the two of them knew that after the first successful mission, after the high of playing God in the interest of avoiding any more civilian bloodshed, they’d taken each other apart piece by piece in a hotel room bathed in light from a brilliant sunrise.It hadn’t become fully apparent until months later that in doing so, they had inadvertently changed each other, become new: two people who were only ever real when they were together.(Hermione and Draco are elite assassin/spies who like to work, and more importantly play, together.)
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 19
Kudos: 141





	1. Ariadne

**Author's Note:**

> my brain said, hey, what if hermione and draco were assassins who also had a lot of sex? and now this exists! i wanted to write something a little darker and filthier than my usual sort of insufferably tender intimacy, so this obviously ended up being sort of tenderly dark intimate filth. i hope you enjoy what turned into very little context and quite a lot of heavy breathing.
> 
> ariadne was the cretan princess in the myths of theseus and the minotaur. she's usually associated with mazes and labyrinths. felt right.
> 
> unbeta'd and not brit-picked. as usual, all issues are mine.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco and Hermione follow a mark in Berlin.

From the outside, Ariadne looked like any other abandoned storefront in Berlin. An ancient stone wall sprawled unevenly upward from the ground until it ran into a set of wide, grimy windows that had long ago been blacked out from the inside with several layers of yellowed newspapers and an arterial network of duct tape. A faded wooden sign hung crookedly above the door, worn so thoroughly that it appeared, at first glance, to be entirely blank. Only the faintest print of an image remained: a strange, dizzying intersection of lines that stood out in vague relief when the evening light glanced across it just so.

The club was accessible through a warren of passages leading behind and under the property, winding down through a dank cellar and into the fragrant earth. Passages shot off at frequent intervals in seemingly impossible angles.

Light refracted strangely through the initial tunnels. Beyond an enormous iron door, a foreboding drop into darkness signaled the club’s official entrance. Once the door was heaved closed, shutting visitors into a disorienting underground wonderland, the way was lit by tiny, recessed LED lights and stray flashing strobes. 

In the heart of it all was a room ringed with bar stations, the center an open dance floor. The pulse of music and lasers radiated from a raised platform in the middle, where a rotation of DJs and dizzying lights spun together for hours on end. Wooden doors and narrow archways gave way into more tunnels that led off in every direction into even more complex warrens of rooms, full of treasures waiting to be found if one knew how to navigate them. Some led to much more exclusive parties; others to a series of spaces carefully curated for kink; others still to tasting rooms for exotic foods and questionably sourced, shimmering liquors. 

The largest and rarest set of rooms spiraled above it all, looking down upon the dancers through thick, mirrored glass floors. Their occupants were invisible from below; if anyone threw their head back on the dancefloor, they would only see a writhing mass of humanity reflected back at them.

It was in one such room, suspended in the earth above bodies whirling to a pounding, relentless beat, that Hermione Granger waited. 

Her gaze was sharp and clear, despite the two empty glasses that sat beside her on the burnished steel end table, still sticky with the residue of something tart and very alcoholic. The low light of the room caught and gleamed against the smooth curve of her calves. The skirt of her silvery dress was short, the neckline plunged and the back dipped even lower, but she sat tall and completely comfortable in her skin.

The beat of the frantic techno below vibrated through the ground beneath Hermione’s feet, making the thin and very high heels of her shoes shiver against the glass. If she focused, she could feel her blood throbbing along to the beat.

The door scraped open behind where Hermione sat on a deceptively comfortable leather bench. It was worn, but still buttery and soft against the exposed skin of her thighs. Her spine straightened imperceptibly. She didn’t turn around.

“Looks like it’s a good thing I stopped to get you a drink on my way up.” His voice was low, amused. Familiar. “To think, you’ve been sitting up here without one.”

Slowly, because she liked making him wait, Hermione turned her head towards him, though not enough to actually look at him. “As if you didn’t bring me that as an insurance policy for being atrociously late.”

He laughed, so low Hermione might not have heard it, but the shiver it sent skittering across the tender skin at the back of her neck was impossible to ignore.

“I do apologize for keeping you waiting.” His voice had moved closer behind her. “It was terribly rude of me. Isn't there anything I can do to make it up to you?”

The tip of one of his fingers drew an unbearably light trail along Hermione’s spine from the small of her back to her hairline, cleaving her body clean in half with sensation. Only her steel self control kept her from trembling.

“I’ll consider it,” Hermione said, pleased to hear her voice come out steady. “You usually find a way.”

She was still focused forward, her eyes following the undulating mass of bodies on the dance floor below them as the strobe lights illuminated glinting silverwork against black leather, a glittery cheek, the toss of someone’s long violet hair. 

Although they were quite alone in the small, cave-like room, the voice behind her didn’t speak again until it was right next to her ear. Hermione swallowed. “Any sign of Peregrine?”

She shook her head minutely. “I’m not actually certain the tip was worth anything.” At least that much was true.

“And yet you went to great lengths to summon me.”

“I knew you were relatively nearby. Can you blame me for taking the opportunity?” 

Hermione felt a rush of cool air against her back as her view of the dance floor was suddenly obscured by a pair of unfairly long and lean legs, clad in a dark fabric that somehow both emphasized their strength and screamed expense. She dragged her eyes up over the impeccably tailored trousers, over a trim waist that broadened into wide shoulders inside of a crisp, deep blue, long sleeved shirt.

Finally, she let herself look at Draco’s face.

It hit her so hard sometimes, how much she missed him when they weren’t together — which was by necessity and design almost always. At best, at _most_ , they had these moments together, stolen while on a job in the spaces around the most unpleasant bits of what they were paid to do. Their trysts enormously compounded the constant risk and secrecy their employment already demanded of them both.

The Birds of Prey Program — unaffectionately called BOPP — didn’t technically exist, and neither Hermione nor Draco were technically employed to work for it. Ostensibly, they weren’t coworkers, and they certainly weren’t friends. There was no official record of them going through extensive training together as the only two recruits from their year. There was no evidence that they had, together as part of their certification, taken out a blood supremacist in Genoa who was quietly but rapidly amassing a following and had designs on both the Italian and British Ministries. They made it look like an accident, and without him, his following had turned on each other and rapidly dissolved.

Not a soul in the world but the two of them knew that after that first successful mission, after the high of playing God in the interest of avoiding any more civilian bloodshed for Britain, they’d taken each other apart piece by piece in a hotel room bathed in light from a brilliant sunrise. It hadn’t become fully apparent until months later that in doing so, they had inadvertently changed each other, become new: two people who were only ever real when they were together.

After that, they were never supposed to work as a team again. As a rule, BOPP assets operated alone. One perk of being international spies and off-the-grid assassins, however, was that often in the thick of a mission, they simply couldn’t be monitored by their employers. Their work was too precarious to be safely observed from afar and too precise to ever need such oversight. They were given full decision-making power and agency.

Luckily for Hermione, most of her own personal decision-making involved finding Draco and fucking him, then neutralizing the mark together. Not always in that order. 

They had a single recorded mission together: the man in Genoa. What no one else did or could ever know, was that all but nine of their combined marks since entering the field had been taken out by the two of them, together. 

Somewhere below them in the crowd was Johannus Erk, aka the Train Terror, aka Peregrine. The skinny, dead-eyed man was responsible for a spate of magical terror attacks centered around railway hubs in four mid-size European cities, according to the intel from Hermione and Draco’s employers. He had so far only succeeded in killing two muggles, though their deaths had been reported as accidental in local newspapers and the connection had only been noted by a sharp eye somewhere higher up the chain of command at BOPP. It was only a matter of time before he escalated in a major way, and Hermione had been sent in to stop him before the inevitable happened. Johannus had a penchant for German techno and women trussed to the teeth in leather. Hermione had a solid hunch from the moment she received word he was in Berlin that he would turn up in Ariadne sooner rather than later.

If her hunch was correct — and her hunches usually were — Johannus would stay in the club for many, many hours. No matter which grotto he disappeared into, Hermione knew she and Draco would find him before the sun rose and he stumbled back out into it tomorrow.

That gave her plenty of time to lean into the implications of Draco’s broad, warm hand as he raised it to cup the side of her face.

He held it against her for a long moment, his thumb brushing across the sharp angle of her cheekbone. Suddenly, his grip tightened. The shift in force was enough to make Hermione’s mouth go dry. She darted her tongue out to wet her lips, and Draco’s eyes gleamed as he tracked the movement. His other hand had found its way to the lush curve of her hip, holding it just as tightly as her face.

They both knew that Hermione could fight her way out of his grip if she really wanted to. Were Draco a normal man, she could incapacitate him in less than four seconds and without messing up her hair. But Draco was not a normal man, and thus they were both also keenly aware that he could certainly make it hard for her to escape. 

It didn’t matter. She didn’t want to escape from him.

She tried, sometimes, but it was just for the hell of the way her heart pounded and her pussy throbbed when he inevitably caught her. 

More than once, she had slipped around dark clubs, through networks of back alleys, across the roofs of a quiet seaside town in southern Spain, a prickle at the back of her neck telling her that he was nearby. That he had her firmly in his sights. That she was in the best kind of danger possible.

The thought of the chase made her shiver, now. Draco felt the movement under his hands and smiled wolfishly down at her. The hand on her cheek released her and drifted down until it was pressed against the golden skin of her throat. 

Hermione groaned quietly, barely a vibration in her vocal chords. Draco didn’t miss it. His fingers spread and tensed against her, and Hermione slowly, obligingly, tipped her head backwards until she could meet his eye. He flexed his thumb and fingers against the opposing sides of her neck, briefly but precisely blocking the flow of blood just long enough for her vision to go soft around the edges and her breathing to grow short. He relaxed his hand just as quickly, and the rush of blood and oxygen and sensation back into her brain made Hermione feel hot and desperate and alive.

Draco was looking at Hermione like he wanted to devour her, but she also felt the careful surveillance in his gaze as he catalogued the essential parts of her, making sure she was unscathed since he’d last had his hands on her. The feeling of his intense perusal rushed through Hermione, flooded her, and she watched him watch her with a tremble of anticipation and a strange, charged sort of peace. Or something as close to peace as Hermione Granger might ever be afforded.

“I missed you,” Hermione said. It was quiet. She hadn’t planned to say it, exactly, but she could’ve stopped herself if she wanted to.

Whatever Draco had been imagining she might say, this was clearly at the bottom of the list. His mouth dropped open, only slightly, a barely noticeable tell that Hermione had indeed thrown him off. It only took him a moment before he laughed, his eyes sparkling with delight.

“Now, Asset Nine, you know as well as I do that you’re not supposed to have _feelings_. At least not any feelings like _that_.” His voice grew a tangle of dark undergrowth. “You’re only allowed to experience single-minded bloodlust and hunger. I thought BOPP trained its elite agents better than this.”

“Hmm,” she agreed, reaching up to place her long-fingered hand against the one Draco still had pressed almost tenderly against her throat. “What a shame to the program I am. It’s almost as though someone imprinted on me during my training to become a hyperfocused killing machine and left me with the fatal human capacity to feel — but only for them. Do you have any idea who that might have been?”

“Sounds like a right arsehole, whoever it was,” Draco murmured, and then his mouth was on hers.

It was like being suddenly alive again, emerging from a fog of functioning without feeling for months on end. The first kiss after they hadn’t seen each other in a while was often so intense it briefly took her out of her body entirely.

It wasn’t a euphemism to say that Hermione and Draco had both been trained into machines. 

Her skin glowed with health; her body looked soft, a collection of generous curves and inviting spots that in a tight dress made her arse even more memorable than her face — a real asset in her line of work — but what couldn’t be seen by the naked eye was Hermione’s impossible strength, terrifying mastery of magic, and lightning strike reflexes.

She could take nearly anyone down in physical combat, no less with a well placed hex, but she preferred a far stealthier and cleaner form of work, one that involved using her body and dark wit to get her into swanky underground gambling halls and dark club back rooms and private yachts with astonishing ease. The knives (and wand) strapped to her thighs usually only served as a _break glass in case of emergency_ kind of protection. It was rare she drew a weapon, sometimes even when actually committing a kill.

Draco suddenly shifted both of his hands to the back of Hermione’s thighs, bending just enough at the knees that he could hoist her easily into the air. Her legs wrapped around his waist on easy instinct. 

Being with Draco was entirely disarming, as the very body she had spent her entire adult lifetime fine-tuning, listening to, adjusting, and weaponizing was not used to being taken by surprise. And yet Draco managed to skirt her instincts every time. She knew _how_ he liked to touch her, the roughness of his fingerprints and palms, the possessiveness in his voice when he snarled sweet, nasty words in her ear — but she was never prepared for it. She succumbed to him, let him sweep her into his current until her body was so incandescent with sensation that she’d almost slide right out of it and into his.

Draco had her up against the rough wall of the room before she could draw a full breath. Her spine pressed against the uneven stone, making her hiss. Draco pressed his body against hers and buried his face in her neck. He bit at her throat, and Hermione’s fingers flexed against his shoulders until her nails left crescent moon marks in his pale, luminous skin.

“I missed the smell of you,” Draco growled against her neck, puncturing his words with a long, slow lick that chased her pulse up to the vulnerable spot underneath her chin. “And the taste. Think about it all the time.” He laughed, low and dark to himself. “I almost lost a target I was trailing for intel on Sparrowhawk last week because I was thinking about holding your thighs open and fucking you with my tongue. Not sure how I would’ve explained that to Radler.”

Now that she was caught fast between him and the wall, Hermione had nowhere to hide from the dangerous rush of heat Draco’s words sent flaming through her. It also meant his hands were free to wreak havoc on her body. His fingers caressed her arse through the soft fabric of her dress, massaging the plush of her underneath. He slid one hand down to slip under the hem of her dress, which was already rapidly losing ground, his hands easily skirting past both thigh knife holsters by memory and easy instinct. Her wand was kept fast against her thigh through a special loop sewn into the right hand holster. She felt it jump a little as Draco brushed past it and it registered his magic.

Hermione leaned her head down, just enough so that she could speak directly into Draco’s ear. She felt his body react to her, everything in him tensing and reaching for her as she drew close.

“Last night,” Hermione said, “I was thinking about how I would see you today while I was drawing a bath. I was cold, so I got in as it slowly filled with steaming hot water. I made myself come twice before the tub was even full, imagining it was your fingers inside of me, your mouth inching over my skin as the water rose to cover me.” 

She tugged Draco’s earlobe with her teeth, nipping lightly. His hands squeezed her arse and thigh, _hard_. 

“It felt so good,” she breathed, “but I knew the real thing was going to feel inconceivably better. I closed my eyes, and thought about you, thought about your voice, your cock, your hands on my arse...I was so close, but kept pushing myself just a little farther. And then…” she trailed off suggestively, waiting for him to take the bait.

Draco didn’t disappoint, pulling back so he could meet her gaze after she’d hesitated for a long moment. The look on his face spoke of a deep hunger, for her. “And then?” 

“And then — well, I heard a big splash, and opened my eyes to discover that in my blind pursuit of pleasure I’d accidentally knocked a spare washcloth into the water and suction had pulled it against the overflow valve, so nothing was draining.” She bit her lip. “I flooded the bloody hotel bathroom.”

Draco was so taken aback by the surprise turn in the story that the laugh he let out seemed to be startled out of him. Hermione loved the sound of Draco’s laugh. It was like a precious gemstone she could hold up to the sunlight in rare, fleeting moments of joy. She couldn’t help laughing at herself, too, though it certainly hadn’t been so funny last night. 

“Well, Kit,” he said, once he’d regained his composure. The nickname was short for _Kitten_ , which had started as an insufferable, ironic bit and inevitably stuck with the staunch perseverance that only the most insufferable, ironic bits do. “I guess that leaves me with one question.” He leaned in and pulled Hermione’s lower lip between his teeth, kissed her soundly for a few heart stopping seconds. 

“And what might that question be?”

Draco put his mouth right next to her ear. His voice held something wild. “Did you finish, after the flood? Did you finally make yourself come all over your own fingers?”

Hermione had a feeling the raw look on her face would embarrass her if she could see it. Draco’s hands were moving again, both of them now about to slide underneath her dress — 

“I’m so glad you asked, because I never did,” Hermione sighed, and noted with considerable glee the exact moment that Draco realized she wasn’t wearing anything at all underneath her dress.

Draco made a noise like a snarl caught in the back of his throat and dug his fingers deep into the bare flesh of her arse. “Bloody hell,” he said. “You did this on purpose.”

“Of course I did,” Hermione agreed serenely. She sounded far calmer than she felt.

“These are the things that drive me to madness when we’re apart. Thinking about you choosing to get dressed without knickers. Watching yourself in the mirror as you slid this outrage of a dress on, knowing I would eventually discover you bare.” He paused, seeming struck by a new idea. “Or, worse: you putting on something tiny and lacy for me, and then taking it off later because you’re way too hot to wait for it.” He didn’t miss Hermione shivering against him, and grabbed her chin to make her meet his gaze. He searched her eyes hotly. “If I open your clutch, what would I find in it, Kit?”

Hermione stared back at him as she answered. “Swiss army knife. Back up wand. At least two books. First aid kit. Burner phone.” Draco already knew all of these things, and he let out an impatient breath. Hermione bared her teeth in something that might have been described as a smile, had it been several shades less dangerous. “My knickers.”

Draco sucked in a pained breath. “Those will be my knickers when I leave you again tomorrow,” he said, spinning from the wall with Hermione in his arms and carrying her back toward the unusually wide leather bench in the center of the room. “Just like this delectable bare arse is mine.” He squeezed for emphasis.

Hermione rocked her hips upward into Draco’s warm, muscled abdomen as he carried her, certain he would feel the heat radiating from between her legs as she pressed against him. “And what about...this?” she asked, biting her lip and feigning shyness. 

Draco laughed, a mercurial sound. “You mean the cunt currently dripping against my favorite shirt? Yes, that’s mine, too. But you already knew that. You already know all of this.”

Hermione had long since stopped pretending she didn’t love being possessed by Draco. It would’ve rankled her if he wasn’t just as vociferous that he belonged to Hermione right back. He’d said once, when he thought she was deeply asleep, that being hers was the only thing that made him human. 

Draco sat easily, unencumbered by the weight of the woman he was carrying. Hermione wound up in his lap, legs spread on either side of his and bent under so she could balance on her knees. Her dress had risen so far it was nearly around her waist, and both slinky straps had given up a valiant fight and fallen down her toned shoulders as she’d been transported against the room, baring her breasts to Draco’s open hunger. 

Hermione sat perched on Draco’s legs, more covered by her thigh holsters and heels than by her dress. It had been effectively reduced to a very soft and very expensive belt. One of Draco’s hands tangled in it from behind, winding it around his palm and using the leverage to haul her even closer.

His other hand brought Hermione in by the back of her neck for a fierce, hot kiss, his tongue caressing hers, skimming across her gums, nipping at her lips in the way that made her want to climb inside of him. Draco groaned against her mouth as she used her newfound leverage to roll her hips against him, goosebumps racing across her skin as her nipples slid against the luxurious fabric of his shirt.

They stayed like that for several minutes, kissing and rutting steadily against each other. All at once, Hermione felt Draco’s muscles clench beneath her, and then he was shifting her backwards, off of his lap, until she was standing in front of him. 

“Bloody unreal,” Draco murmured. He slid one foot forward to kick between Hermione’s until she spread her legs more widely. The inside of her thighs felt sticky and cool against the open air. 

Draco reached an absentminded hand out in front of himself and trailed one finger from the sensitive back of Hermione’s left knee, up the dimpled skin that stretched over her hamstring, and so, so lightly across the flushed skin of her cunt. He neatly circumvented her clit, and Hermione felt everything inside of her shudder as he passed it by. 

“Turn,” Draco said. Hermione did, and Draco promptly leaned forward and bit the supple curve of one arse cheek. She hissed, legs trembling, and reached up to pinch both of her nipples hard to counterbalance the sting.

“One of the only things I’ve ever felt certain of is that there is no God,” Draco said, once he’d soothed the bite with his tongue and his mouth was no longer full of her. He reached both hands up, massaging firmly, kneading just so to get a glimpse of her arsehole every so often. 

“But then I see you naked, or touch your arse, or smell your cunt, and I am suddenly, _rabidly_ a believer.”

He was such a fucking sweet talker. And bloody hell if it didn’t make Hermione wet.

Draco stood up behind her, coming close enough that she could just feel the heat of him stirring the fine hairs along her back. “Arms up, Kit,” he murmured in her ear, and Hermione easily raised her arms above her head so that Draco could slide the puddle of fabric that had once constituted a dress up and off of her.

“Do you want me to handle this?”

She appreciated the ask. There were sporadic moments where Hermione took charge with Draco, made specific demands and took the precise things she wanted from him. For the most part, however, she found enormous relief in giving herself over to Draco. The rest of her life required such intense restraint and focus that sometimes Hermione even found it hard to get herself off when she was alone. It was the sound of Draco’s voice, the way he used her body for both of their pleasure, that truly freed her.

“Yes,” Hermione said, because she very much wanted Draco to handle this, handle _her_ , and he wouldn’t do it without verbal confirmation.

There was a moment of silence behind her before Draco’s voice came, silky and dangerous and only a scant inch from her ear. “On your knees, Kit.”

Hermione’s brain had barely registered the request before she was sinking to kneel on the floor. She had a fleeting moment of worry about how sore she’d be tomorrow and almost sighed in relief as her knees made contact and she realized Draco had cast a silent cushioning charm on the glass.

“Close your eyes. Lean forward. Hands on the ground. _Very_ good,” he crooned, as Hermione seamlessly followed the litany of commands. His warm hands caressed her arse and thighs, holding her open to him. She could hear him inhale as he examined her from behind, and her face burned, but she kept her eyes closed. 

“If I were a better man,” Draco mused from behind her, “or rather, if I were a good man at all, I would draw this out like you deserve. Work you up to the edge. Make you come until you think you can’t bear to be touched again and then one more time after that, just to prove you can.” She could feel his breath against her exposed cunt as he talked.

“I dream, sometimes, about that afternoon when I teased you for hours, and when I finally took the clamp off your clit you came so hard it made you cry. I licked the tears off of your face when I fucked you.” Hermione burned. She’d dreamed about that day before, too.

“But I’m selfish,” Draco said. He leaned forward, using his tongue to sweep a long, hot path from the top of her arse up to the middle of her back. “And your cunt is right here, begging for me. It’s been nearly three months, and I’m tired of waiting.” 

He pulled away from her, leaving her body cold and aching to be consumed. Hermione could hear a soft rustle of clothing being shed, and the next time she felt him touch her, it was to slide the unmistakably fat head of his cock through the mess of slick between her legs and dripping down her thighs. One hand went to her hip, and the other pressed steadily between her shoulder blades until she took the cue and dropped forward to her elbows.

Draco leaned forward and blanketed her with his torso, though he kept his hips pulled back far enough that his cock held steadily against her pussy without breaching. Hermione had to suck in steadying breaths through her nose to keep herself from rolling her hips backwards and taking him into her body all at once.

Pressed against the length of her spine, Draco leaned forward and bit her shoulder. 

“Open your eyes, Kit.”

Hermione did, and was immediately greeted with the sight of three hundred or so sweaty bodies writhing to the beat below them. She scanned all of the faces turned up towards the ceiling like sunflowers arcing towards the sun and felt a heady jolt of arousal and shock explode through her. For a moment, as Draco smoothly slid himself forward to bury his cock inside of her, Hermione forgot that the floor was opaque from below. She imagined all of those clubbers, their gazes already enhanced through the lens of ketamine and vodka redbulls, throwing their heads back in the heat of the dance and looking up to see Hermione Granger, wanton and bare as Draco Malfoy’s cock split her open from behind.

It took three deep thrusts from Draco before she remembered that those whirling, laughing people below could only see their own shining faces reflected back down at them, but it had been long enough. Long enough that Hermione could feel the paroxysms of her orgasm beginning deep in her belly, without so much as a passing graze to her clit.

Draco, of course, had intended exactly this. “That’s it, Kit,” he said behind her, voice low and delighted. “That’s it, that’s my girl. Do you like the idea of them watching you? Seeing you lose control?” He laughed as Hermione clenched hard around him.

“Not losing control,” Hermione gritted out between her teeth. “Giving it to you.” And then she did exactly that: gave herself over to a bliss that threatened to turn her inside out completely. Her arms gave way underneath her; her breath stuttered in her chest; she was only vaguely aware of Draco holding himself still as deep inside of her as he could as the network of muscles and tissue around his cock rolled and shuddered inside of her. 

She had barely started breathing again when Draco began rocking his hips into her at a pace that forced a guttural moan from deep inside Hermione’s chest. She could only just hear his voice over the faint ringing in her ears, but he wrapped his arms around her front and hauled her upright against him so they were both kneeling. His words ran clear as an icy mountain stream through her brain.

“Below us. Eight o’clock. By the bar.” 

Hermione blinked a few times to clear her vision, her eyes roving the area Draco had indicated below. Sure enough, the mark had shown. He appeared to be leading two women toward a passageway Hermione already knew lead east and down even further into the earth. There was no other exit except the pathway in, and it looked like he’d be down there for a while. This might be easier than she’d expected.

“Looks like you’re still my good luck charm,” Hermione murmured. “It really was just a guess that he might find his way here.”

The hand that wasn’t deftly working both of Hermione’s nipples drifted down to roll across her clit, and she was suddenly immensely grateful for the way he was holding her up and getting her off at the same time. 

“In just a minute,” Draco said, a rumble against Hermione’s neck. “I’m going to come inside of you. Fill you up. And then you’ll have a choice to make. You can either put the knickers in your clutch back on, though they will still be mine afterward — ” he paused to pull his cock almost all the way out of Hermione's body, sliding back in agonizingly slowly. 

“Or?” Hermione prodded, panting.

“Or,” Draco said, “you can skip the knickers, and we can go neutralize a dangerous man with my come dripping down your legs.” 

Hermione would have collapsed had Draco not been holding her up. He laughed. “Thought you’d like that.” 

And with that, he finally dropped his control, let it snap completely. His strokes grew deep and powerful and his hips rutted relentlessly against her. His fingers were teasing and deliberate on her swollen clit. Hermione felt suddenly sure that Draco was the only thing holding her body together as she was wracked with waves of deep and unyielding pleasure.

Just as she felt herself trembling along the edge of a blinding orgasm, Draco sat backward, pulling Hermione down onto his lap and forcing the blunt head of his cock deeper inside of her than Hermione had ever felt it before. Every nerve ending in her sang; every atom transformed into a live wire emitting sparks. Her head dropped back against his shoulder and she cried out, trembling violently. Draco’s hand was steady against her throbbing, tender clit even as she felt him shudder beneath her and the hot pulse of his come inside of her.

Hermione’s heart sang as she thought about making Draco lick it out of her later.

But first, there was the small matter of a murder.


	2. At Last

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco meets Hermione in Brussels to eliminate another mark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wasn't quite ready to be done with this world yet, plus got a few requests for expansion, so here it is. more assassin/spy filth which turned accidentally tender. my first attempt from draco's point of view, just to spice things up a little.

The Radisson Hotel’s gold-plated elevator doors slid shut behind Draco Malfoy with a barely audible _snick_ , and for a moment he was suspended, cocooned by shimmering metallic walls and his own slightly distorted reflection. 

It made for a keen irony that between the two of them, Hermione had grown to have a taste for expensive accommodations while on the job, and the sundry luxuries that accompanied them. Her elite status as an agent made the BOPP directors reluctant to question any of her expenses, and in her eyes, the moral and physical accommodations she had made for this work meant she deserved every piece of compensation she could drag from them. 

Draco, it turned out, could sleep just about anywhere, so long as he had a decent pillow. This meant he spent a lot of time trailing leads out of hovels that cost his employers little and forced Draco to focus solely on the job in front of him. It also meant that in these stolen moments with Hermione, he got to experience the heady and impossibly luxe combination of criminally soft towels, Michelin star meals delivered straight to the door, and Hermione herself. 

It wasn’t that Draco didn’t enjoy a little luxury; he just didn’t much see the point of it if he wasn’t experiencing it with Hermione. Perhaps it was a sort of self-inflicted penance. He didn’t feel like he particularly deserved nice things, but he was never capable of denying himself when it came to her.

A huge bed with 800 thread count sheets meant little to Draco unless Hermione’s golden body was sprawled out across it. A luxurious bathrobe wasn’t exciting until he could strip it off of her inch by inch, tasting her skin as he went. He had no interest in ordering pricey champagne and tender hanger steaks and caviar tasting flights without the promise of tasting them on Hermione’s lips.

And to deprive himself of these delicacies when alone meant that every time he met up with Hermione for a job, the heady rush of fancy venues and criminally expensive alcohol and efficient bloodshed and _her_ were enough to keep him buoyed for whatever lonely weeks were certain to come again afterward. 

The elevator deposited him with a flourish on the 17th floor. Hermione had a funny affinity for odd numbers, which always made her seem very human and incredibly charming to Draco. It wasn’t unusual for her to move hotels entirely if she couldn’t get an odd numbered room on an odd numbered floor. Draco had made the mistake of commenting on this only once, and she’d given him a look that could’ve cleaved a boulder in two. He liked that part, too.

Draco could sense the magic of Hermione’s wards as he stepped out of the gold-plated box that had ferried him upward and into the hallway. It prickled across his skin. He could almost smell her in it. As nobody was watching, he allowed himself a small shiver of delight and anticipation.

Arriving at the door to room 1733, Draco raised his hand as if to knock, then placed his palm flat against the center of the door, right against the thick knot of magic that the wards were emanating outward from in all directions. The powerful, familiar touch of Hermione’s magic rushed over and through him all at once, and with a small click, he heard the door unlock. It swung forward under the weight of his hand, and Draco pushed the rest of the way until he could slip through into the narrow but very elegant entrance to the suite.

“Honey,” he called, “I’m home.”

Hermione wasn’t anywhere to be seen upon first glance around the palatial suite. Draco followed the faint sound of Etta James drifting through the stupidly large sitting room and into a bedroom with a massive four-poster bed. He was delighted to recognize the lacy, periwinkle Coco de Mer knickers and matching bra that he’d purchased for and then peeled off of Hermione many times strewn across the silky bedspread. 

It was not the _most_ money he’d ever dropped on barely-there scraps of fabric to adorn her body, but it was nonetheless among the worthiest purchases Malfoy money had ever endeavored to buy. (The others, in descending order, included all of the other absurdly expensive lingerie Draco had bought for Hermione. He liked to find and send her new pieces as he traveled like a normal someone might send postcards, especially with the promise of getting to see her in them the next time they met up for a job.) 

There were few things Draco enjoyed more than the sight and feel of his very dangerous and very beautiful Hermione trussed up in lace, but the implication that she was around the corner somewhere in absolutely nothing at all… well, that might take the cake. 

As he pushed open the door he found to the left of the bed and around a wallpapered corner, the music suddenly intensified: it rushed around him on a draft of lush, scented air, revealing Hermione in one of the more absurdly large bathtubs Draco had ever seen. Her eyes were closed, her head tilted back against a thoughtfully designed headrest. He thought about the last time Hermione had told him about her experiences in a hotel bathtub the night before a job and smirked to himself.

Draco wasn’t worried about startling her. She had certainly felt him breach her wards, if she’d not been aware of his presence from the moment he entered the hotel. There was no slipping by Hermione Granger. Nor would Draco ever want to.

Draco leaned his weight up against the gilded door frame and watched Hermione lounge for a moment, unable to keep the smile from his face. 

He knew better than anyone that Hermione thrived on action; that fighting a war from the age of fifteen onward and then her training for work had developed her into a creature that valued movement, precision, forward momentum over rest or extended pause. He also knew better than anyone how much she deserved moments of slowness, tenderness, stillness. He was loath to break her out of her bath reverie, despite being absolutely certain she was aware of her audience.

“Are you going to stand there all night?” Hermione asked. Her mouth was the only part of her that moved. Draco’s grin widened, though he stayed put against the door frame. After a moment, Hermione cracked one eye open, landing unerringly on Draco’s face. “Come on in,” she said with a dangerous raise of one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “The water’s fine.”

Draco didn’t waste any time, stripping down until his lithe, powerful body was completely bare. With his socks off, he could appreciate that the marble floor seemed to be heated from within. Luxury, indeed.

It was an enormous tub, but not quite large enough that Draco climbing in didn’t still require some awkward maneuvering. Hermione’s eyes opened lazily again as he pressed her forward, away from the side she was leaning against, so he could get in and settle himself behind her with Hermione between his legs. She was treated to the sight of Draco’s cock swinging free just inches from her face as he moved, and tilted her head back towards him so he could see the lascivious smile spreading across her face at the sight. 

Navigating around the twin knives Hermione usually wore strapped to her thighs with her wand, all three of which were sitting on the lip of the tub — Draco knew better than to move them out of her reach — he settled himself into the hot water with a sigh. He’d spent three days of the last week trailing a target for intel, and the man had rarely stopped moving for more than a few hours at a time. It was like he sensed the unknown darkness coming for him and was trying to outstrip it. Draco hadn’t slept for almost the entire three days, and his joints still ached from hours of standing in cramped spaces, listening and plotting and hardly breathing at all. The nooks and crannies of ancient Prague stone walls had offered him cover along with a slew of allergens that made inhaling oxygen discretely a real chore.

He’d gotten the details he needed eventually: four names and a poorly coded address he’d easily figured out as the center of the group’s operations. This would be his in for eventually targeting the real mark, their grimy, ruthlessly violent leader. The Buzzard. Draco would be back for him.

Now, he could feel the tension of the trail leaking out of him into the sudsy water. Hermione’s smooth, soft back pressed against his chest and her explosion of hair was impossible to escape.

“You smell good,” Draco said, sliding his nose up her neck and dragging her earlobe slowly between his tongue and his two front teeth. She shivered against him, laughing, and tilted her head to the side so Draco could suck on the delicate skin beneath her ear. 

“I think that might be the literal litre of bubbles I poured in here,” she said gesturing vaguely toward an expensive-looking glass bottle standing open on the countertop.

“Hmmm, perhaps,” Draco said. He could indeed smell the jasmine — Hermione had put enough in the bath that the smell had greeted him at the front door of the suite — but underneath it he also smelled Le Labo Rose 31. Liquid gold, that stuff. Hermione almost never went without. Draco was fairly certain the way his cock was hardening rapidly was at least in part due to some sort of Pavlovian reaction to the scent of her.

Draco kept a tester vial of Rose 31 in his toiletries kit and in each piece of his luggage. When he was missing Hermione particularly intensely, or just really needed to get off fast while on a mind-numbingly boring stakeout, a whiff off the vial could get him most of the way there.

Now, he leaned forward, his nose dragging across the silky arch of Hermione’s neck once again. She was relaxed against him, soft, but there was a catch in her posture and the set of her jaw that told Draco something was bothering her. If she didn’t offer to tell him soon, he’d get it out of her by the end of the evening.

“What were you thinking about before I arrived?” Draco asked. Under the water, he smoothed his palms across every part of Hermione he could reach. The frothy bubbles and hot water made her skin feel especially soft beneath his fingertips, though he was conscious of her powerful musculature underneath.

“Whether ‘Sunday Kind of Love’ or ‘At Last’ make me believe in true love more.”

“Hard call,” Draco mused, one hand gently drifting to squeeze Hermione’s lush left breast, tugging her nipple between two deft fingers. “What did you decide?”

“That I definitely don’t believe in true love,” Hermione said with a laugh, rolling her head to the side so she could flash Draco a disarming grin. She was teasing him, and he knew it, but it still made something clench deep in his gut.

Draco leaned down and met her for a searing kiss, drawing her in until he could feel her let go of her tightly wound control and be swept up by the intense heat of his mouth and caresses of his tongue. He pulled away to lick up and around the seashell curve of her ear and bite her neck, a move he was well aware drove her mad. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” he murmured to her.

“Neither of us are under the delusion that I am a lady,” Hermione said. She raised Draco’s right hand from the water where it had been traversing the velvety insides of her thighs and enveloped his first three fingers into the hot cave of her mouth. She sucked, hard.

“Point taken.”

Hermione shifted her body, already pressed tightly against Draco, enough that his cock could slip between her legs. She brought them together, trapping him against her cunt. It was significantly hotter than the water around them, and Draco couldn’t help the sigh that escaped him. His underwater hand spread across her stomach, holding her against him as she writhed her hips. Every few passes, the head of his cock would catch against her, promising more.

Draco took his fingers out of her mouth, and bypassing his other hand, made a beeline for her clit. It was slippery and velvety under the water, and his gentle touch against it made Hermione hiss. She only held out for a minute of teasing before she reached down and took the hard, eager length of him in her hand. Angling him just right, she bore backward and down against him and sank fully onto his cock.

Draco groaned and sank his teeth into Hermione’s shoulder to keep from crying out. He hadn’t expected to have her on his cock already, and the sensation was nearly blinding. Usually she loved the build up. Plus, he’d wanted to get whatever secret she was keeping out of her by way of teasing before they got so into things he’d lose the thread completely. 

He certainly wasn’t going to complain.

Draco could feel every tiny movement Hermione made while he was inside of her: the restless shifting of her hips, the muscles inside of her rippling and tightening; even, vaguely, each breath she took. 

“Couldn’t wait, hm?” he asked, his mouth still traversing over the curve of Hermione’s right shoulder. This time, his teeth had left a brand on her, a visible mark that made Draco’s cock flex inside of her when he looked at it. He may have been a highly trained assassin, but that didn’t mean Hermione Granger couldn’t literally and metaphorically bring him to his knees embarrassingly easily.

“Needed a distraction,” Hermione said breathily. It was the first direct indication she’d made that something was going on, and Draco’s ears perked up. He knew better than to push when she was on the edge of spilling something, and continued the teasing tack instead. 

“And am I distracting you?” He planted his hands on Hermione’s hips and easily dragged her up off of his lap, settling her back down with a grunt. She made a low, keening noise, spurring Draco on. “You like having my fat cock in you? Splitting you open?”

He reached up with a soapy hand to turn Hermione’s chin to the side so he could see her face. Her eyes were still open, glassy, but she was breathing hard through her lush, open mouth. She met his eyes and nodded, a tiny confirmation.

It never ceased to amaze Draco that a woman who he had witnessed in literal battle — a woman who knew 27 different invisible ways to stop a human heart from beating and at least triple that number of ways to incapacitate a person without spilling any blood — could be so affected by Draco’s filthy words. And yet she really, really was. Even if he hadn’t been close enough to feel her pulse surge under her soft skin, he was very familiar with the way her breath hitched, her eyelashes fluttered, the hot inside of her body clenched around him until he had to bite his lip to keep from losing his own control and slamming into her.

“Every time I’m inside of you,” Draco said, thrusting his hips upward as far as he could given his limited leverage, “I have the insane thought that you were made for me.” He pinched her right nipple firmly between his fingers, twisting and making her squirm on his lap.

“That is insane,” Hermione laughed. “I wasn’t made for anyone.”

“You weren’t,” Draco agreed easily. He dragged his nose between the gorgeous, sharp ridges of Hermione’s shoulder blades, exposed above the water line as she perched on him, and then followed the same path with his tongue.

“If anything,” Hermione said, “I was made for myself. And then you molded me just for you.” 

Well, that was an erotic thought. Draco could feel his cock flexing inside of her at the admission.

Hermione was beginning to grow restless on top of him, her movements becoming jerky and frantic as she worked for better leverage. Draco grabbed her hips, stilling her on his cock and making her focus for a moment.

“Kit,” he said, waiting until she turned to meet his eyes with her own wild ones. “If you need me to fuck you, all you have to do is ask.”

“Then fuck me,” she said, and clenched everything inside of her tightly around him.

“That was a command, not a request.”

Hermione almost growled at him. He could hear the edge of it in her voice and had to keep himself from laughing aloud. “Draco,” she said, somehow making his name into something gravelly and dangerous.

“Alright, alright,” he said, “I get it. If I don’t take you to that enormous, beautiful bed and fuck you senseless right now, there will be dire consequences.”

He was expecting more snark, but Hermione only sighed, sounding relieved. Her shoulders dropped. “Thank you,” she murmured. “I’ve had a long day.”

There it was. Another hint. 

Draco was tempted to seize the moment and drag it out of her, but who was he kidding? Hermione needed him to devour her. He could figure out what was wrong after making her come at least three times. He shifted her up and off of his lap, both of them making choked noises as he slipped out of her, and helped Hermione maneuver out of the tub and dry off enough that she wasn’t dripping. She held her knives and wand in one hand as she sauntered out of the bathroom in front of him, rivulets of water escaping the edges of her hairline and sluicing across her skin. Both of them left faint, wet footprints on the thick carpet of the suite’s bedroom, though neither of them cared a bit.

Hermione placed her weaponry on one ornate bedside table and swept her discarded lingerie off the bed with a graceful arm. She crawled her way up towards a frankly absurd collection of pillows, treating Draco to a gorgeous view of her arse. He could see her pussy peeking between her legs as she moved and felt his mouth water. He flexed his fingers in anticipation.

“Stop moving,” he said, his voice urgent and low. “Stay just like that.” 

Hermione obeyed, peeking over one shoulder at him with a dark promise on her face. “See something you like?”

“You look too good not to eat.” Draco easily climbed onto the enormous bed and slunk toward her until he could use his broad hands to massage her arse, open her fully to him, and bury his face in her glistening cunt.

There was really, truly, nothing in the world like Hermione Granger’s pussy. It made Draco feel insane to think about sometimes, how happy he would be to stay exactly like this for the rest of his life. Too bad he’d been an utterly vile bellend in school, or he might’ve discovered his own personal nirvana earlier.

That was a thought he absolutely couldn’t dwell on. Especially while his tongue was roving between teasing the slippery skin of Hermione’s clit and exploring the hot slide of her cunt, plunging into her like his cock had been a few minutes prior. Hermione wasn’t making much noise, but he could tell by the way her weight shifted between her knees and the muscles in her thighs rippled and tensed that she was close. 

Draco pulled back just enough that he could slide the first two fingers of his right hand inside of her, sighing audibly at the feel of her. The sounds they were making were obscene and incredibly hot. His thumb found her clit easily, avoiding where she’d be most sensitive in favor of manipulating the slick tissue just above back and forth. Hermione writhed. He leaned forward, mouth aching for more of her, and dragged his tongue across her arsehole. 

A strangled moan escaped Hermione. Her thighs were trembling so hard that Draco readjusted his weight and slid his free arm underneath her so he could keep holding her up and accessible to his hungry mouth.

Three more passes of his tongue from around where his fingers were buried inside of her to up and over her arsehole, and Hermione shattered. Draco barely kept her upright as he licked her through it, watching rabidly as she began dripping around his fingers. He didn’t stop, curling them inside of her and leaning into the mess of how slick she was, his tongue everywhere at once until he felt the subsiding ripples come back full force once more as Hermione shuddered over the edge into another orgasm.

This time, Draco let her body down, gently. He watched her roll to her side, her breasts heaving as she tried to catch her breath. He licked his fingers with relish, enjoying the way Hermione’s eyes darkened as she observed him. His cock was throbbing. 

“You still haven’t asked me to fuck you, Kit.” Draco was teasing, but he liked pushing her to talk to him in these moments. He knew that Hermione knew what she wanted, and he wanted to hear her say it. Out loud. 

“Maybe I don’t need it anymore,” she said, eyes flashing. “After _someone_ just got me off twice in a row.”

“If you’re going to lie,” Draco laughed, “at least make it sound convincing.” He leaned over so he could sink his teeth into the lush swell of her hip. She squirmed, letting out a gasp Draco knew she’d tried to keep contained. It made him smile against her skin. He hid his face and soothed over his teeth marks with his tongue.

Hermione met his gaze when he pulled away and Draco held it, unafraid of the intensity he found there. 

“Behind me?” she asked, a raspy edge to her voice. She was still on her side, and Draco knew what she wanted. 

He maneuvered his way up and behind Hermione’s body, slotting up against her perfectly. He tucked his knees behind hers, their bodies two crescent moons on the luxurious bedspread. One of Draco’s hands snaked underneath her body via the curve of her waist and down between her legs. The other was off on a mission to drive her mad with teasing between her nipples and throat and the painfully soft skin between her breasts.

Draco could feel the anticipation and impatience in every line of Hermione’s body where she was pressed up against him. He pulled his hips back and eased them forward just enough so that he could drag the sensitive, fat head of his cock against her dripping pussy. The heat of her was unbearable.

“Draco,” Hermione said. Her voice was low and ragged. 

Draco decided he didn’t need to push her any further. He used the arm not pinned by her body weight to lift her trembling leg, just enough that the next time his insistent cockhead caught against her, the angle would be right for him to push his way back inside of her. 

They both groaned once he was thrust inside of Hermione. He paused to give her a moment to adjust before pressing in even further, relishing the way her body rippled and shivered in his arms as he did so.

Music was still drifting in from the bathroom around the corner, though Hermione had turned it down on her way out. The air around them was thick with moisture from the bath. Draco felt submerged once again, this time in Hermione. His favorite place to be.

Draco adjusted their angles and planted the foot of his top leg on the bed to provide some leverage, giving himself over to the urge to snap his hips into her. He could hear little gasps escaping her from each thrust, and they spurred him on. He sank deeper into her, his pace growing relentless. He had to struggle to keep his brain clear, his focus on Hermione.

“This what you wanted?” Draco kept the flat of two fingers sliding against the swollen tissue of Hermione’s clit as he spoke into her ear. His voice was rough. “A good fucking?” He maneuvered his other hand deftly between their bodies and teased around the top of Hermione’s arse as he growled in her ear. “Bouncing on my cock, letting me stretch you open? Letting me touch you wherever and however I want?”

“Yes,” Hermione panted. “Yes, yes, _yes_.”

Draco couldn’t resist leaning forward to bite the arc of Hermione’s shoulder once more, making her hiss with pleasure. Without taking his hands off of her body, Draco managed to move them both so that Hermione was laying on her stomach, arse slightly raised in the air, with Draco still sunk deep inside of her and his legs on either side of her hips. A view he would never grow tired of. 

Coming twice had left Hermione dripping wet, and the space between their bodies was humid and slick. It was easy enough for Draco to brace his weight on his knees and heave his hips upwards, to pulse the fingers of his right hand against her clit as a distraction before he sucked on the middle two fingers of his left hand and sank them slowly into Hermione’s arsehole.

“Oh, fuck,” Hermione said. Her hips rose off the bed and into Draco’s touch almost involuntarily, her limbs shaking and breath coming fast. “Fuck, that feels good.”

“Been too long since I’ve been inside of you,” Draco said, concentrating hard on keeping the pressure on Hermione everywhere that would drive her wild. His hands, hips, cock were all working in concert. He could feel the rhythmic spasms of her body that told him she was close, and kept talking. 

“You like this, don’t you, Kit? Spread out all filthy for me. Dripping on the expensive linens because my cock feels so good splitting you open. And my fingers in your arse.” Draco’s voice had dropped to a throaty whisper. Hermione was trembling underneath him. “Anyone who meets you can tell you’re full of fire. An explosion waiting to go off. But they have no idea just how hot you burn. Especially on my cock.” 

Draco thrust into her on his last words, his right hand manipulating her clit in pulses of intensity, the way he knew drove her mad.

He held himself deep inside of her, having to swallow and breathe deeply just to clear the fuzzy edges creeping into his vision. It was always hardest to keep himself together when Hermione was on the edge of flying apart. Nothing was sexier to Draco than the sensory feast that was making Hermione come, and he was hungry for it.

Balancing himself on his knees, Draco leaned forward until he could murmur in Hermione’s ear with his cock still buried as far as he could manage. “In a few moments, you’re going to come, Kit,” he said, a promise he intended to fulfill. “You’re going to come all over my cock, and I will feel it from deep inside of you.” Hermione whimpered, and Draco felt his own hips starting to jerk as he spoke. They were both hurtling toward something enormous and inevitable. “I’ll feel your body, your cunt, consumed with pleasure. And then, do you know what I’m going to do?”

Hermione was holding her breath and trembling beneath him, but she managed a small noise of inquiry. 

“I’m going to come. Inside of you. I won’t be able to hold myself back. Everything about you is designed to set me off, and I’m going to. I will make an absolute mess of you with my come, and then watch it drip out of you.”

Those last filthy words, paired with Draco’s unerring fingers, were enough for Hermione. She moaned, tensed, and exploded underneath him.

Draco didn’t try to hold himself back. All he could think, see, _feel_ , was Hermione. A snarl left him as his body emptied itself into Hermione’s, the rhythmic pulsing of her muscles around him sending his cock into overdrive. His skin felt tight, stretched across his body and prickling with waves of pleasure that made his vision fade in and out like a tide.

They didn’t always come at the same time like this. It made everything feel tenfold more intense.

Draco collapsed forward and to the side, trying to avoid laying all of his weight on Hermione. His chest was heaving as he tried to catch his breath. He slipped his fingers from her arse and wiped them on the expensive bedspread, though he kept his other hand where it was, gently cupping her pussy. He could feel it still contracting around him, and applied pressure lightly to her swollen clit. Hermione hissed, but didn’t push his hand away, so Draco pressed harder with his fingers, a gentle pulse, and held his hips tightly to her arse until Hermione cried out and her body started spasming anew.

This time, she did push his hand away after her breathing had calmed and the muscles in her abdomen stopped jumping sporadically. “Sensitive,” she panted. Draco let his fingers drift up to her nipples instead, cupping the weight of her breasts and breathing the warm smell of Hermione’s sweat and sex until his head was full of it. 

“Feel better?” Draco asked, playfully twitching his hips just to hear her gasp again.

“Yes,” Hermione said, her voice guileless. “Nothing loosens me up like a good fuck.” She only ever said things like this out loud to him post-sex, when he could practically smell the endorphins rushing through her body. 

“Excellent,” Draco mused. “Then you’ll be nice and relaxed for the job tomorrow.”

He didn’t know what he’d said, but he was instantly aware of the way Hermione tensed in his arms. He could hear her breath catch, and then the way she forced it out and made herself breathe normally. He wasn’t fooled.

Draco bit his lip to keep from hissing as he slowly slid his cock out of the hot clutch of Hermione’s body, pausing for just a moment to admire the mess of her they’d both made, smeared across her cunt and the soft insides of her thighs. He rolled Hermione onto her back so that he could look at her face. She avoided his gaze, but let him run soothing hands across her body wherever he could reach.

“Kit,” Draco said. She still wouldn’t look at him. Draco smoothed one thumb over the planes of her face. “Darling. Sweetheart. _Baby_.” He wasn’t playing fair, and he knew it. He might’ve wanted to call Hermione every sappy, ridiculous pet name under the sun whenever he saw her, but that wasn’t what they did. It certainly got her attention now. Her cheeks flushed softly, and she met his gaze. 

Hermione’s lips parted, but she didn’t speak for a long moment. Her eyes searched Draco’s. “There is no job tomorrow,” she said at last.

Draco’s mind spun into immediate overdrive, but he forced himself to remain still. He waited for more.

“I was trailing Condor earlier today,” Hermione said. “And laying my usual crumbs to get everything set up for a seamless hit tomorrow. But I — was compromised.”

This time, Draco couldn’t stop himself from reflexively tightening his fingers, grasping Hermione harder wherever he was touching her. _Compromised_. That could mean a million different things, and he didn’t like any of them.

“I had to act fast. Go a little rogue,” Hermione said. “I hate doing things off the cuff like that, but it’s what they pay me for, right? If I hadn’t taken care of things, I would be — dead, at best.” She swallowed. “And BOPP would’ve been compromised. You would’ve been compromised. The burner phone with your codename was in my pocket. Bloody stupid of me.”

Draco could barely make himself inhale. He didn’t like this story. Not because of any danger to himself, but because he didn’t like being reminded that Hermione was indeed human, and could still be vulnerable. That he wasn’t always with her when things were at their hardest. 

“What did you do?” he asked. Now that she was looking at him, he refused not to meet her gaze. He wanted to hold whatever she’d give to him.

“I did what I was trained for,” Hermione said. Draco had never heard her voice so soft. “I killed him. And the two skeevy sidekicks he had with him.” She bit her lip, hard.

Draco knew well that however Hermione had made her peace with being trained and paid to eliminate dangerous men by a shadowy employer who may or may not be giving them the full story at any given time, she’d have spent the whole rest of her day fixating on taking two somewhat innocent lives along with the mark. They couldn’t afford to have too many morals in their line of work, but Hermione Granger would never be stripped of the way she felt deeply to her core about her own guiding principles. Draco was actually more certain of this than she was.

“They would’ve done far worse to me, and told me as much. I tried to get out of it without killing them, but…”

“I know you did whatever you had to,” Draco said, and believed it entirely. “I only wish you’d felt you could tell me earlier.” 

Hermione broke his stare at last, turning her head away from him and gazing blankly at the ornate wallpaper. She murmured something he couldn’t hear.

“What was that, Kit?”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come if I told you the job was already done. Or that you might leave.”

Draco had to stop himself from laughing incredulously. He could tell from the tension radiating from Hermione that she was telling the truth, and that it had cost her something. 

He climbed to his knees and over Hermione’s body, moving as gracefully as he could to bracket her between his limbs. He wanted her entire focus for this. Draco braced his elbows on the bed so he could hold Hermione’s face in his hands. She was watching him again as he moved, her eyes deep and fathomless.

“Kit,” Draco started. “Hermione. I love doing this job with you. In fact, I’m quite certain I would have been long dead if it weren’t for our...unorthodox partnership.” Hermione blinked slowly, but didn’t argue the point. “That will be true as long as we both keep doing this. But — that’s not why I came to Brussels, nor why I have followed you around the world at great cost and in enormous secrecy for years.” 

Their faces were only inches apart. Draco felt seared through by Hermione’s gaze, but he couldn’t stop talking.

“I come for _you_ ,” he said. The words burned on their way out. “I come because you are the only thing that gives my life any meaning. I come because my existence is divided by only two categories: when I am with you, and when I am apart from you. And I don’t only mean your body, your wild hair, the smell of you, the way being inside of you feels. I wish it were that straightforward.” 

Hermione had stopped breathing underneath him. Draco moved his hands to the back of her head so his fingers could slide into her riot of curls and leaned forward to press his forehead against hers for a brief moment.

“I know we have jobs to do,” he said. “Horrible, excellent, awful, exhilarating, morally questionable jobs. But you could call me any time, for any reason, and I would come. To rub your feet, or bring you lunch, or just to kiss you on the nose —” he paused to illustrate this particular point “— and make you a cuppa. We may never be people who can do those sorts of things together all the time. But it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it for you without a second thought. That I don’t want it.”

Hermione’s eyes were liquid and dark as she stared up at him, but she wasn’t pulling away. He knew, he _knew_ that this was exactly the kind of thing to make her panic, send her fleeing to the nearest charter flight. He also felt something different in her tonight, like the near call earlier had made her more vulnerable to him than her usual armor allowed. He absolutely wasn’t above using it to his advantage. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been waiting for a chance to tell her something like this.

One of Hermione’s hands drifted upward until it landed on Draco’s face. She traced over the ridge of his brows with one soft fingertip, over the slope of his nose, catching on the bow of his lips. He could feel a burning path across his skin in its wake.

“In that case,” Hermione said at last, bringing both hands up to frame Draco’s face between her soft palms, “please stay here with me for a while.”

Draco felt a grin unfurl across his face. He knew _a while_ wasn’t forever, but in Hermione’s voice, it sounded just the same to him.


End file.
